Kacey Musgraves at Sydney Opera House, Photograph by Daniel Boud
A lot of pop musicians these days get called “retro”, which is often just a polite way of describing the laziness of mainstream music – everything’s retro because the ruling share of performers are allergic to taking risks. But Kacey Musgraves is retro in a way that is no mere regurgitation of the past. The Texas country star borrows the lexicon of prior Nashville queens to craft something vibrantly modern, using old words to describe new problems.
This throwback quality is clear not just in her Dolly Parton-esque country-pop hits, or in her gingham-heavy wardrobe. It’s in her disarming, almost disorienting sincerity. The closest that Musgraves has ever come to irony is in the title of her first album, Same Trailer Different Park. Since then, she’s pursued a sunshine-blasted, good-golly attitude that has seen her rhyme “umbrella” and “tell ya” on one of her biggest hits, and adopt a storybook attitude towards emotional interiority. Bad things do happen in Musgraves’ sonic world – her album Star-Crossed is a concept record about divorce – but the sun always breaks through the clouds in the end.
Musgraves’ gee whizzery is genuinely welcome, not to mention expertly wrought. As her Opera House performance proved, Musgraves is the old-school showgirl that Taylor Swift tried and failed to cast herself as, a powerhouse of old-fashioned good times. From start to finish, it was a show fine-tuned to entertain, almost vaudevillian in its relentless desire to make the audience smile. Musgraves is unafraid to turn to confetti cannons to get a big finish, or to bubble machines to create a sense of togetherness.
Bad things do happen in Musgraves’ sonic world, but the sun always breaks through the clouds in the end.
Big bow in the back of her hair and flanked by an astonishingly tight band, Musgraves assembled a setlist that moved from hit to hit. From a musical perspective, the disco-inflected banger “High Horse” might have been the most impressive song of the night, as Musgraves skipped around the stage without missing a beat, her voice all whiskey and honey. But not even the sheepish-looking boyfriends in the audience could resist the toe-tapping perfection of “Butterflies” or “Slow Burn,” both drawing a roaring response from the crowd.
Perfectly modulated, the show slowed when it was required to slow, and went into overdrive when that’s what the audience needed. A brief sojourn into an acoustic, stripped-back mode was genuinely moving, Musgraves’ voice echoing through the space. This was clearly a performance designed for an arena, but I don’t know if it would have been half as effective anywhere but the Opera House: the space lent an immediacy and an emotional honesty to the brashness. Every musician wants to make each audience member feel like they are singing for them and only them – Musgraves might be one of the few popstars I’ve seen actually achieve that.
Every musician wants to make each audience member feel like they are singing for them and only them – Musgraves might be one of the few popstars I’ve seen actually achieve that.
For instance, towards the end of the gig, Musgraves spotted a young girl in the audience. Beckoning her over, she held the child’s hand, singing along with the fan. That’s an old trick, maybe, but with Musgraves, it didn’t feel like a trick at all. Instead, the performer’s face lit up with genuine excitement at crossing the threshold and engaging directly with a fan.
It felt like a reminder of the undercurrent of emotion and pleasure that runs through everything she does. In an era defined by artificiality of all sorts, Kacey Musgraves is one of the few A-list performers who is always for real.
Kacey Musgraves performed at the Sydney Opera House, on Tubowgule, Gadigal Country, on Wednesday 19 November.
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